by James Swain
Three ways to escape, and none of them was foolproof.
At the end of the day, it was Victor’s job to spirit his family safely out of Vegas. Victor chose the car escape, believing Kat, Nico, and Tommy would be safer at night on the highway. The Boswells had driven to Vegas in three separate vehicles, and Victor assigned three of his children to be drivers of the escape vehicles.
“I want you to leave five minutes apart,” Victor said. “Kat, Nico, and Tommy, you need to stay hidden during the drive. Is that clear?”
“Should we lie on the floor of the backseat under a blanket?” Kat asked.
“That should do the trick,” Victor said.
“No, it won’t,” Billy said. All heads turned to stare at him. “The surveillance cameras on I-15 have infrared lenses and can see into the back of cars. If the police spot something suspicious-looking in the car, that’s cause to pull you over.”
“Jesus. Then where should we hide?” Kat asked.
“I’d suggest drilling air holes in the trunk and hiding there. It’s the safest way to go. Make sure your cars are filled with gas when you leave, so you can drive nonstop. Every gas station has hidden surveillance cameras, and the cops scrutinize every driver.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before,” Victor said.
Billy had helped cheats flee town many times. It was harder than people imagined, but with the right planning and attention to detail, it could be done. “It used to be easy to get out of town. Then the Crips gang out of East LA entered a casino with machine guns and robbed the cage. They escaped on the I-15 with their loot and were never caught. That’s when the cops decided to install surveillance cameras on the highway.”
“That settles it,” Victor said. “Nico, Kat, and Tommy will hide in the trunks. We’ll drill air holes and put pillows down to make everyone comfortable. Sound good?”
Victor’s family agreed to the plan and went to make preparations. Victor stayed behind and spoke to Billy when it was just the two of them in the room.
“I owe you,” Victor said.
“You don’t owe me a thing,” Billy said.
“Yes, I do. Any other cheat would have taken off once the gaming board showed their faces. You did the opposite. I owe you.”
Billy decided not to argue with Victor over this. The cheat’s code required Billy to help a fellow cheat in need with the understanding that one day, that cheat might help him out of a jam. What goes around comes around, as the old saying went.
“Let me ask you something,” Victor said. “This asshole Grimes—why does he have it out for my family? What the hell did we do to him to deserve this?”
“Nothing that I know of,” Billy said.
“Then why’s he targeting us?”
“Because your family is his ticket to getting a promotion. Most gaming agents are drones. They punch a time clock and count the days to retirement. Grimes is a different breed of cat. He’s a smart son of a bitch and can’t understand why he doesn’t get promoted.”
“Why doesn’t he?”
“I don’t think he plays politics very well. In Vegas, it’s all about juice. It’s not what you know but who you know. Grimes is trying to get ahead on merit instead of kissing ass.”
“Is that why he’s after us?”
“You bet. If he can bust your family, he’ll parade you in front of the newspapers and show everyone what a great job the gaming board does in policing the casinos. His superiors won’t have any choice but to kick him upstairs.”
“So this isn’t about us.”
“That’s right. It’s all about him.”
Air holes were drilled in the trunks of the Boswells’ three vehicles. Nico, Kat, and Tommy climbed into the trunks holding pillows to rest their heads upon. The cars departed at five-minute intervals, leaving Billy and Victor standing in the driveway beneath a waning moon.
“You going to fly out?” Billy asked.
“Have to. I can’t sit for more than a couple of hours with my bum leg.”
“I’ll give you a lift to the airport.”
“Much appreciated.” Victor used his cell phone to book a ticket on a Southwest flight to Sacramento that left in a few hours, then went inside to pack. When he was done, Billy carried the suitcase outside and tossed it into the trunk of his car.
“Before we go, I need you to help me get rid of the blackjack table in the rec room,” Victor said.
The lines at airport security were unpredictable. Billy didn’t want Victor to miss his flight and said, “Plenty of people have blackjack tables. Can’t you just leave it?”
“Afraid not. I told the owner that we were hardly going to use the place. It doesn’t jibe with the story I told him. There’s a fire ax hanging on the wall in the garage. Use that.”
“It seems like a waste of a perfectly good table. I can hire someone to move it.”
“Destroy it. No loose ends. You know the score.”
“Whatever you say, Victor.”
Billy chopped up the blackjack table while Victor sat in a chair in the rec room watching him. Victor wanted the table reduced to little pieces so that not even the garbage men would recognize what it had once been. It was harder work than Billy would have imagined.
“Is this small enough?” he asked, holding up the last piece of the table.
“A little smaller, if you don’t mind. It still looks like a leg.”
“Do you really think the garbage man’s going to care?”
“You don’t know who the garbage man is. Remember the mob boss Joe Bananas? The feds nailed him by going through his garbage and reading his mail. Stupid guinea didn’t have enough common sense to shred his letters before he tossed them away.”
Billy cut the remaining piece in half and showed it to Victor. “How about now?”
“Good enough.”
In the garage were two wheeled plastic garbage cans. Billy brought them into the house and filled them with the remains of the table, then wheeled them outside and deposited them at the curb for the next pickup. He went to his car to find Victor sitting in the passenger seat.
“Did you figure out my super con?” Victor asked during the drive to the airport.
Billy said no. He’d examined the table while chopping it apart. It was ordinary, without any hidden crevices to hold a tiny camera that could pick off the dealer’s hole card and relay the information to the cheat. The secret of Victor’s ingenious scam was still safe.
“It’s built into the equipment,” Victor said.
Billy went over the double line. He righted the car before speaking. “You’re kidding me. I looked at every square inch of that table.”
“I noticed that. I discovered a flaw in the equipment that lets me rip the house off blind. It’s happening at the factory, and the casinos don’t know about it. Yet.”
“You think they’re going to spot it?”
“Eventually they will. Or another cheat will figure it out and rip them off. It has a limited shelf life. If it’s not used soon, it will go away.”
“You’re saying the casino will replace the flawed piece of equipment, and your super con won’t work anymore.”
“Correct. Which leads me to my next question. We need a large crew to pull this off. My family is out of the picture. Do you have another team you can partner up with? I’d hate to see this fall by the wayside.”
They had reached the airport with its confusing array of signs. Billy headed for the departure drop-off area while giving it some thought. He was on a first-name basis with the captains of several crews that made their living scamming the joints. There were cooler mobs that specialized in switching decks on unsuspecting dealers, past-posting crews that placed late bets at roulette, card-counting teams with hidden computers that bled the blackjack tables, and crews that manipulated the dice during craps for huge scores. Each crew was excellent at what it did and capable of pulling this off.
“I’d be happy to make some phone calls. What’s our split?”
“You’ll have to pay the other team half to get them to agree. You and I will split the other half. I know it’s not what we agreed to, but it’s still a huge score.”
It was a huge score. And it was also better than nothing.
“I’m in,” the young hustler said.
“Good. You can bring us our share, and I’ll take you out to the best steakhouse in Sacramento.”
Victor was paying him a compliment. He trusted Billy to deliver the money and not shortchange him and his family. That meant a lot to Billy. They shook hands, sealing the deal.
TWENTY-SIX
Cory and Morris went to Machine Guns Vegas to blow off some steam. There were many gun ranges in town, but only MGV offered military guns for rent. Just by plunking down a credit card, a customer could shoot a Barrett sniper rifle, a SPAS-12 dual-mode combat shotgun, or an M4 lightweight submachine gun used by SEAL Team Six.
They opted for the Three Gun Experience. For a hundred and ninety bucks, they got to shoot three weapons for forty-five minutes straight. Cory chose the AK-47, the M4, and the KRISS Super Vector, which looked right out of a sci-fi flick. Morris had his own preferences and chose the combat assault FN SCAR, the MP5 with a banana clip, and a fully automatic Uzi.
Together they shredded paper targets in the range. Cory preferred targets of flesh-eating zombies, while Morris liked killing terrorists. They were both steaming mad at Travis and made the targets pay for the big man’s betrayal. It was bad enough that Leon was being held against his will because of Travis. Now Travis had attempted to get Pepper, Misty, and Gabe to jump ship. Travis was trying to destroy Billy’s crew, the rat bastard.
Joining Billy’s crew was the best thing that had ever happened to them. Not that long ago, they’d been selling worthless coupon booklets on the Strip. Billy had plucked them off the street and offered to teach them the art of the grift. They’d signed up, and the money had started to flow. They’d bought a new car, rented a house, and filled the fridge with all the delicious food they’d missed growing up. Their lives were heaven, and they were not about to let Travis jeopardize their good fortune.
Finished, they went to the Sand Dollar Lounge and downed shots of Cuervo with beer chasers while listening to the Moanin’ Blacksnakes on the makeshift stage. Soon they were swimming in their chairs and feeling no pain.
“Want to get another round? My treat,” Morris said.
Normally, Morris’s paying for drinks was enough incentive for Cory to say yes.
“I’m toast,” Cory said.
“You drunk?”
“As a skunk. How about you?”
“I’m on my way. How about shrimp tacos from the truck? I hear they’re decent.”
Cory grunted no. Shooting machine guns and quaffing beer usually lifted his spirits. Tonight was different, and his head was filled with bad thoughts. The band took a break, and the purple spotlights on stage went dark. Cory said, “What do you say we drive over to Henderson where Travis lives, hop the wall, and kill that son of a bitch.”
“Are you serious?” Morris asked.
“Dead serious. Travis needs to be taken out of the picture.”
“Don’t you think Billy’s already thought about this? Let him handle it.”
“Billy’s got enough on his plate. It’s time we start pulling our own weight.”
“I don’t think that’s a smart idea.”
“You’re a chicken. Bock, bock, bock.”
Cory became impulsive when he drank, and his threat to kill Travis was not an idle one.
Morris snatched the car keys off the table and rose from his chair.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
When Billy recruited people into his crew, he made them create identities for themselves in case they had the misfortune of getting arrested during a job and had to answer questions about their background and livelihoods to the police. These identities were natural extensions of who they were, making the details easy to recall.
Cory’s and Morris’s identities were of perpetual college students enrolled at UNLV. To make this look real, they paid tuition and took online courses and lived in a rented house two miles from the university’s main campus, the neighborhood filled with students who never slept.
Morris drove down their block. Six bare-chested guys with long hair were playing a makeshift game of soccer in the middle of the street. A keg of beer was providing libations while flaming burgers cooked on an open grill.
“I want to kill that asshole Travis,” Cory said.
“Stop talking like that, man. It’s not healthy,” Morris said.
“Some people need killing.”
“He’s twice your size. You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Muscle doesn’t stop bullets.”
Hearing Cory talk like this upset Morris. They had bounced around together in foster homes and watched each other’s backs. Morris liked to think it was the reason why they weren’t too damaged as adults. He pulled into their driveway and killed the headlights. They’d bought the house out of foreclosure and were still fixing it up. Cory crawled out and threw up in the bushes.
“You want to go to the ER, get your stomach pumped?”
Cory grunted in the negative. When the catharsis was over, he spoke. “The next time we go out, remind me not to drink tequila.”
“You said that the last time you puked your guts out.”
“This time, I mean it.”
Morris unlocked the front door and went to deactivate the security system. To his surprise, it was already turned off. “Didn’t you set this when we left?”
“I thought I did.”
The house had a sprawling free-flow design with partial walls separating the rooms. In the center of the living room was a giant fish tank filled with exotics. Morris suffered from insomnia, and late at night when he couldn’t sleep, he’d sit in front of the tank and watch the fish. The chair he used had a reclining feature, and he often dozed off in it.
Travis sat in that chair now, waiting for them.
“Hey guys, hope you don’t mind, but I let myself in,” the big man said. “Still had the key you gave me when you went on vacation and had me feed the fish.”
A half-finished bottle of beer sat on the floor. Travis picked it up and took a swig. Cory started to walk toward their intruder. Morris grabbed his friend’s arm and restrained him.
“You don’t look too happy to see me,” Travis said.
“You broke into our house,” Cory seethed.
“I used a key. We need to talk.”
“Get the hell out, right now.”
Travis didn’t budge. The tank’s bright lights danced across his rugged features. Morris spied a bulge beneath Travis’s shirt and guessed the big man was packing heat.
“I have a business proposition that’s going to make you bookoo bucks,” Travis said, as slick as a used-car salesman. “Sit down and take a load off your feet. You won’t be disappointed by what I have to say.”
“You’re a fucking asshole,” Cory spit at him.
“And a traitor,” Morris chimed in.
“I won’t deny it. But I’m not small-time anymore. And you both are. I found this little beauty on your kitchen table. What are we talking about, fifty years old?”
Travis removed a horse booster kit from the pocket of his shirt. The kit consisted of a miniature battery pack, a solenoid, and a radio receiver, the whole thing designed to be woven into a racehorse’s tail. The cheat sat in the grandstands with a radio transmitter disguised as binoculars. During the race, the cheat would press a button that activated the solenoid and triggered a needle that jabbed the horse in the ass, making it run faster.
“It gets the money,” Morris said defensively.
“It’s bush league,” Travis said. “You could drug the horse to run faster or shock it through the jockey’s saddle. But stick it with a needle? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The horse booster was primitive, but sometimes primi
tive was okay. When the race was over, the jockey could tear the kit from the horse’s tail and dispose of it. There was no telltale evidence, which couldn’t be said for the other ways to fix the ponies.
Cory looked ready to jump their visitor. A capital idea, only Travis would draw his gun and shoot him. Morris dragged Cory over to the couch and made his best friend sit down beside him.
“Explain your deal,” Morris said.
“Broken Tooth uses a network to place his bets for him,” Travis said. “This network is in Asia and Europe, but no one in the good ole US of A. That’s where you boys come in. You’ll place his bets in the States and clean up. Broken Tooth had hoped to strike a deal with Billy, but it didn’t work out.”
“Why not? What did Billy do?” Morris asked.
“Broken Tooth thinks Billy’s a snake. Billy wants five hundred grand in good-faith money to give to the Rebels’ defensive players. Broken Tooth said it’s too much. He thinks Billy’s pulling a fast one.”
“And you agreed with him,” Cory blurted out.
Travis sucked his beer, his eyes never leaving Cory’s face. “Broken Tooth wants to move on. I’m hoping you’ll be smart enough to see what a great opportunity this is.”
“Billy made you rich, and this is how you repay him?” Cory asked, the booze thickening his tongue. “What fucking rock did you crawl out from beneath?”
“Watch your mouth.”
“What did Billy do to make you betray him? Did he say Karen was ugly? Or that your sleight of hand sucks? Come on, I want to know.”
Travis’s eyes flared, and he leaned forward in his chair. “You’re going down the wrong road, Cory. Keep it up, and I’ll make you eat those words.”
“Answer the fucking question.”
Travis touched the handle of his gun through the fabric of his shirt. “All right, I’ll tell you what that asshole Billy did. He kept criticizing me, told me I needed to work on my dice and card switches, like I wasn’t good enough. I got the money, didn’t I?”
